Bronwyn Newell

Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?

One lit phone in a dark theater ruins the movie for two hundred people. That is not a personal choice, it is a shared-space problem, exactly like talking during the film. Alamo Drafthouse proved the market rewards strictness: their famous no-talking, no-texting rule, enforced with ejection, is the core of their brand, and plenty of customers choose them partly because of it ([policy](https://drafthouse.com)). Making phone-free the default, with a few clearly labeled phone-friendly screenings for anyone who needs a device, protects the experience for the majority without banning anyone. Theaters sell immersion you cannot get on a couch. If they will not defend it, streaming will keep winning.

Should schools teach practical habits for managing social media’s effects on identity and well-being?

Nobody taught me any of this and I paid for it at nineteen, doomscrolling through everyone else's highlight reel my first semester until my sleep and my grades both cratered. What finally helped was not a lecture, it was a psych elective where we tracked our own usage for two weeks and designed personal rules, like no phone in the bedroom. Schools already do versions of this for nutrition and driver's ed because teenagers are bad at long-term thinking; that is developmental science, not nannying. Nearly half of teens say they are online [almost constantly](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/), and we hand them the device with zero instruction. A practical habits class is the least we owe them.

someone called theaters expensive nostalgia machines and i felt that in my bones lol

Entertainment · Oct 6, 2026 · Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

Genuine question: if they're employees can the school fire them for bad performance? Like cut a sophomore for dropping passes? That feels worse somehow

Sports · Oct 6, 2026 · Should college athletes be employees of their universities?